It's fun to examine projects that I could never underwrite or build in Toronto. Here's another one from Tokyo — a 10-storey, single-stair apartment building on a busy street, next to a metro station.

The site itself is only 59.49 m2 (~640 ft2), and the building footprint is 47.97 m2 (~516 sf), for a total of 388.28 m2 (~4,179 ft2). There's retail on the first and second floors, one home per floor on levels 3 through 8, and then a two-storey home on levels 9 and 10. All of this is serviced by a single elevator, and a single open-air egress stair off the back.

The building itself uses a simple structural system involving 6 columns (which you can see evenly placed on the plans). According to the architect's notes, they started with a simple 4-column design, but apparently the columns were too large and compromised the suite layouts.

Tokyo is a unique city and this kind of housing wouldn't work everywhere. But there's a universal lesson here: removing barriers and allowing small infill projects is a good thing for cities. Until these projects are feasible, we won't know exactly what the market actually wants and could support.

Photos from Hiroyuki Ito Architects

It's fun to examine projects that I could never underwrite or build in Toronto. Here's another one from Tokyo — a 10-storey, single-stair apartment building on a busy street, next to a metro station.

The site itself is only 59.49 m2 (~640 ft2), and the building footprint is 47.97 m2 (~516 sf), for a total of 388.28 m2 (~4,179 ft2). There's retail on the first and second floors, one home per floor on levels 3 through 8, and then a two-storey home on levels 9 and 10. All of this is serviced by a single elevator, and a single open-air egress stair off the back.

The building itself uses a simple structural system involving 6 columns (which you can see evenly placed on the plans). According to the architect's notes, they started with a simple 4-column design, but apparently the columns were too large and compromised the suite layouts.

Tokyo is a unique city and this kind of housing wouldn't work everywhere. But there's a universal lesson here: removing barriers and allowing small infill projects is a good thing for cities. Until these projects are feasible, we won't know exactly what the market actually wants and could support.

Photos from Hiroyuki Ito Architects